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Are bookings slow?


sloopsailor
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My wife and I are booked for the March 12, 2023 Hawaii cruise out of San Francisco on Royal Princess to celebrate my 73rd birthday and our 39th anniversary four days later. This is our 10th cruise and the 2nd on Princess. We booked this cruise about 1-1/2 years in advance, which we typically do to get exactly the room we want and to hopefully get better cruise fares. On this cruise we are paying $7,299 for our Mini-suite, Princess-Plus included. The other rooms in our category are currently listed for $10,118, so we're saving almost $3,000!

 

Today I had some time to kill and out of curiosity searched the booking pages for rooms that were still available in case we wanted to move to another location. It seems that the ship is almost empty as of today, about 8-1/2 months out. There are entire decks that have hardly any rooms booked. 

 

Is this normal? Are people waiting longer than before to book their cruises? And if not enough people book this cruise, would areas of the ship be closed off if the ship is not full? And might Princess cancel the cruise do to lack of interest? 

 

Thanks. 

 

 

Edited by sloopsailor
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It's no wonder cruises aren't being booked. I have been trying for the last 4 days to book a cruise and check pricing on 3 other cruises. I get as far as cabin selection and, as soon as I click on a cabin, the Princess site bombs out with this message:

 

image.png.199f43dfd2b24a64623f757794f56462.png

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2 hours ago, sloopsailor said:

My wife and I are booked for the March 12, 2023 Hawaii cruise out of San Francisco on Royal Princess to celebrate my 73rd birthday and our 39th anniversary four days later. This is our 10th cruise and the 2nd on Princess. We booked this cruise about 1-1/2 years in advance, which we typically do to get exactly the room we want and to hopefully get better cruise fares. On this cruise we are paying $7,299 for our Mini-suite, Princess-Plus included. The other rooms in our category are currently listed for $10,118, so we're saving almost $3,000!

 

Today I had some time to kill and out of curiosity searched the booking pages for rooms that were still available in case we wanted to move to another location. It seems that the ship is almost empty as of today, about 8-1/2 months out. There are entire decks that have hardly any rooms booked. 

 

Is this normal? Are people waiting longer than before to book their cruises? And if not enough people book this cruise, would areas of the ship be closed off if the ship is not full? And might Princess cancel the cruise do to lack of interest? 

 

Thanks. 

 

 

I've been on over 50 cruises and would say it's normal for there to be a lot of empty rooms 8.5 months out. People are procrastinators and a lot of people think they get better deals closer to the cruise date; who knows? I've seen good deals both ways. Areas of the ship will not generally be closed off, with the exception of maybe a dining room. I have never heard of a cruise being cancelled due to a lack of interest as they still have plenty of fixed costs.

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2 hours ago, Thrak said:

It's no wonder cruises aren't being booked. I have been trying for the last 4 days to book a cruise and check pricing on 3 other cruises. I get as far as cabin selection and, as soon as I click on a cabin, the Princess site bombs out with this message:

 

image.png.199f43dfd2b24a64623f757794f56462.png

 

Yup, Me toooooooooo.

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22 hours ago, Thrak said:

It's no wonder cruises aren't being booked. I have been trying for the last 4 days to book a cruise and check pricing on 3 other cruises. I get as far as cabin selection and, as soon as I click on a cabin, the Princess site bombs out with this message:

 

image.png.199f43dfd2b24a64623f757794f56462.png

yup...same thing for the last several days 😡 and it's still not fixed.

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Just now, andio2of5 said:

yup...same thing for the last several days 😡 and it's still not fixed.

 

Sent a note to my TA. It's Sunday so figured I would hear back tomorrow morning. Nope. He emailed Princess and tried calling but couldn't book. He did manage to secure a hold on the cruise though and will follow up tomorrow. It's good to have a TA that checks his mail on a Sunday and jumps right on things.

 

Hopefully they will have the site fixed by the time the $1 deposits start.

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7 hours ago, andio2of5 said:

well....Monday morning and still not working 😡

 

My TA was able to finalize things and sent me my confirmed booking. It's idiotic that Princess can't seem to fix this issue.

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i was able to get thru the entire process of a pretend booking today.....looks like they might have fixed that particular problem...though it seems that prices went up from the last time that I was able to access it.

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3 hours ago, andio2of5 said:

though it seems that prices went up from the last time that I was able to access it.

A check of prices today on our booked cruises show that they have all gone up $100 to $200 pp.  What a coincidence that the Princess sale starts on Thursday???

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On 6/26/2022 at 2:34 PM, Thrak said:

 

Sent a note to my TA. It's Sunday so figured I would hear back tomorrow morning. Nope. He emailed Princess and tried calling but couldn't book. He did manage to secure a hold on the cruise though and will follow up tomorrow. It's good to have a TA that checks his mail on a Sunday and jumps right on things.

 

Hopefully they will have the site fixed by the time the $1 deposits start.

I was able to put a 2 day hold on a cruise on Sunday.  Called TA to takeover the booking but she called me on Monday and said she could not the the takeover docs processed by Princess in time to guarantee my cabin selection.  So I went back online, used the Chat and within 3 minutes she booked the cruise and used our FCD's.  Within less than 5 minutes I had the confirmation email.  Now my TA can do the takeover paperwork (and get me her normal discount).  

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